Nanophotonic devices and nanostructured materials for enhanced nonlinear optical interactions and optical signal processing

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Modern optical communication networks suffer from fundamental limitations of electronic signal processing due to the limited bandwidth. All-optical signal processing is necessary to overcome these limitations, as optical materials exhibit much broader bandwidth compared to that available in electronic signal processing. All-optical signal processing relies fully on nonlinear optical interactions of light with matter. Such interactions result in the appearance of new spectral components and the modifications of the optical response of the medium supporting the propagation of the optical beams. The appearance of new frequencies in the optical spectrum of the information streams is crucial for wavelength conversion used for transferring the information channels from one frequency band to another. The modifications of the optical media's response by nonlinear interactions are necessary for optical switching of the information streams between physically separated channels; it can occur nearly instantly, much faster than electrical switching.**Another target area that can benefit from nonlinear optical interactions is quantum information. In quantum communication networks, one can securely encode and transmit information. Quantum information fully relies on generation of correlated (entangled) photon pairs. Such photon pairs can be produced through nonlinear optical interactions, decomposing (down-converting) an optical beam into two beams with new frequencies.**The goal of the proposed research program is to develop nanophotonic devices and nanostructured materials aimed at producing highly efficient nonlinear optical interactions for all-optical signal processing in optical communication networks, and for the field of quantum information. Several approaches will be pursued towards the realization of enhancement in nonlinear optical response of photonic materials and devices. The first approach includes engineering integrated optical devices and photonic nanostructures to produce the desired enhancement. The second approach is material-based; it relies on the physics of the nonlinear optical response of nanocomposite optical materials which are nanoscale mixtures of two or more homogeneous constituents. The size of individual grains in such materials is much smaller than the wavelength of light, and the electrostatic optical field redistribution with the localization in the component with the higher optical nonlinearity can be achieved by a proper tailoring. Combining the two approaches is expected to result in dramatic enhancements of the optical nonlinearity, opening up the route to new interesting physics and practical applications. The implementation of the enhanced nonlinear optical response in integrated optical components for all-optical signal processing, as well as in producing integrated quantum optics networks is an ultimate goal of the proposed research program.